It turns out that the "Radeon HD 8950" that Lenovo's Erazer X700 ships with, is yet another example of GPU makers shamelessly rebranding previous-generation GPUs, to the whims of pre-built PC makers. One of our forum members spotted this page on AMD's website, which lists the specs-sheets of nine OEM-exclusive Radeon HD 8000 series SKUs, which reveal them to be complete rebrands of their HD 7000-series counterparts. If you're into pre-built PCs, and planning to buy one soon, watch out what's crunching pixels in it.

Wow. Not just the budget cards, but the "top end" models as well...Are they that strapped for cash?

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I don't see it as being a money thing. I see it as a way to prevent users from buying a useless upgrade, while giving them time to tweak new designs further. We don't see any launch info from NVidia either right now, so it's not like this leaves AMD behind in GPU performance.

Sea Islands still is Radeon HD 8000 series. These are OEM-only models. If anything, it will hurt OEMs, not AMD. People will avoid buying pre-built PCs even after the real HD 8000 "Sea Islands" series launches, because they'd suspect re-branded HD 7000 cards in them.

NV has been guilty of this plus releasing weaker SKUs of certain Desktop Models under same name for OEM yet the Desktop Models are beefier than OEM parts

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If you're making a case for Nvidia's prior indiscretions, I seem to remember ATI "updating" the Rage Pro to Rage Pro Turbo that came with drivers optimized for synthetic benchmarks and shittier gameplay performance- and that was sometime around the beginning of 1998 (February I think) - so I wouldn't bother playing the historical card.

btw.. now that we are seeing more re-brands i am curious to know, what will users of these oem systems get to see when they use GPU-Z or how are their drivers different from retail models? do the drivers detect them as 8xxx(OEM)?

I think it is a more problem that you didn't post the nickname of that 'forum member',
(or whoever ordered you not to) rather than a rebranding from some companies.
I wrote in a thread "both disappointing" (Nvidia + AMD) and we already are in GPU Dark ages

Personally, I think this is quite normal. They can do whatever they want, seriously.

I remember reading somewhere that the mobile HD8xxx naming and architecture would more closely follow the desktop counterparts than ever before. I just didn't expect the desktop parts to adjust to mobile practices, hoping it would be the other way around.

It's not like nVidia never did anything like this, but damn AMD sure does have crappy timing. Pulling a stunt like that just when they seemed to be able to get ahead is quite the slip-up.

They are only doing this with OEM parts not the 8000 series in general. They will still put out the next gen that will actually be a next gen.

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And that makes it ok?
It's not like the OEM market is insignificant - if it was, AMD wouldn't be doing business in it. And I for one wouldn't enjoy being screwed over just because I wanted to buy a Lenovo or a Dell. This will hurt sales, and it is a crappy move, no matter how you look at it.

I think it is a more problem that you didn't post the nickname of that 'forum member',
(or whoever ordered you not to) rather than a rebranding from some companies.
I wrote in a thread "both disappointing" (Nvidia + AMD) and we already are in GPU Dark ages

Personally, I think this is quite normal. They can do whatever they want, seriously.